Leaving the beach behind we head back into the Cultural Triangle to climb Sigiriya or Lion Rock.

Jett starts the morning with a vomit, then eats breakfast before a hot and cold fever hits, a massive temperature to boot. We grab some short eats (samosas etc) and off we go.

70kph is the maximum speed limit in Sri Lanka making travel extremely slow but probably safer if you can use that word in Country where over-taking on blind corners is quite normal.

Add to this tuk tuks, trucks, buses, cows, monkeys, motorbikes and numerous other slow moving objects and 110kms in distance on a good road takes us 3 hours to cover.

Walking around down the bottom Jett is white as a ghost and vomits again. I say “what do you want to do?”

He is adamant that being sick won’t ruin our day so says “Whatever you want me to do” so onwards we go.

It’s about 38 degrees in the shade as we start the climb, Jett is on my back with Kyles and Maddi leading the way, oh god it’s steep, windy and hot!

About a 1/3 of the way up, the steel stairs attached the the rock face begin with a very long spiral staircase chucked for good measure, then a walkway carved into the mountainside where we see the Lions feet before launching ourselves or almost crawling as Maddi and Kyles do up the final very scary stairway.

The view from the top is just incredible, it should be after the 1 hour slog to get there but Jett really isn’t interested, he’s hot and tired, Maddi tries to take as many “cool” pics as poss and Kyles and I just wonder how we managed to get up with a sick little boy in tow.

Going down is a breeze and the air-con of the van is bliss, Jett falls asleep immediately for the 2 hour drive to Polonaruwa and The Clay Hut Village which I chose for our next two nights.

Along the way we see wild elephants on the side of the road and beside a tank or huge lake, it’s great to see them walking unshackled and wandering around wherever they want to go. Ok there are electric fences to keep them in the Parks but otherwise they just cruise around, very cool!

Arriving at Clay Hut Village at night was probably a good thing as it is badly in need of a clean and paint.

The good thing is the owner, she puts out a big traditional spread of really nice food and then keeps saying to me, “don’t you like it, eat some of this, why are you only eating rice, have some of this etc” I ate that much I nearly exploded.

I joked with the kids on the way that the beds would be made of clay, I was close, actually concrete bases but good mattresses so we slept well.

Deciding that 1 night was enough in this lavish isolated environment, we continue on to Kandy , we ate another massive traditional meal for breakfast prior hitting the road. Jett decided vomiting was the best thing to do, here we go again!

The touts at the ruins are serious and finally I relent and buy Jett a extremely annoying snake charmers flute.

Polonaruwa was the ancient Kings city and the ruins are fairly good but the 3 huge statues of Buddha carved into a rock face are really really impressive.

Jett is getting better as is starting to talk a lot, pointing out the awful scabby looking dogs, especially any parts that could be considered rude, definitely on the improve.

Within the time it takes to drive the 65kms to Dambulla, (about 2 hours) he has bounced back well and nearly makes all the stairs up to the Rock Temples by himself.

The caves that were carved out of the side of a granite mountain top for the monks by the King of Kandy before Christ are nothing short of amazing!

The walls and ceilings are covered in colourful frescos and hundreds of statues of Buddha line the 5 caves.

Hundreds of monkeys with small babies line the steep track making the trip up and down fairly entertaining for everyone involved.

Kandy here we come, we think Maddi will be slightly disappointed as we may have hinted that its a Sri Lankan version of Willy Wonkers World.